


What The Dead Can Teach

by JackedofSpades



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir, The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Genre: Angst, Crossover, F/F, Gen, Multiple Crossovers, SPOILERS for Gideon the Ninth, SPOILERS for both Traitor and Monster Baru Cormorant, Some violence but none of it is worse than canon, Sword and Bird Lesbians fight each other cuz they are sad about their gfs, which is Not Saying much but it's not that bad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 17:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21285425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackedofSpades/pseuds/JackedofSpades
Summary: SPOILERS for Gideon the Ninth, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, The Monster Baru Cormorant, and additional series to come in Chpt 2 and 3.Harrowhark Nonagesimus arrives to the Mithraeum, emotionally crushed at the death of her cavalier but ready to serve her God and Emperor. Unfortunately, she still has quite a bit of training and pain yet to go through. Chapter 1 opens with her meeting her first Lyctor instructor, Baru the First. Two more chapters will follow crossover characters as additional Lyctor instructors. Possibly more if I think of them, but for now, just 3 total.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 15





	What The Dead Can Teach

**Author's Note:**

> Hi please don't read this if you don't want to get spoiled, last warning. Also I know my writing of sword fights and form is awful and bad but consider this? Baru sucks at swords and also the point of this fic is <strike>fun</strike> pain. I don't feel like I totally nailed either of them as being in character, but again consider? It's fun as shit to drag Baru and Harrow is goin thru it. PEACE

Harrowhark was a shell of what she had been, hollowed out and cavernously empty. Gideon was dead and nothing mattered, except for everything else, except the fact that Gideon’s soul was the one thing in her contemptible, empty self still worth living for.

Harrow closed Gideon’s eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, God stood before her, waiting patiently for her to compose herself. 

They stood in a grand training hall within the Mithraeum, filigreed walls and beautiful textured metals wove with bone meeting in a high nine-sided atrium. Harrow very much felt like a bird trapped in a gilded cage.

“You’ll be meeting your first instructor today,” God said, his eyes oil slick with regret, his mouth turned in a mournful smile. “I’m sorry to say, she’s a rough introduction. She will hurt you.”

Harrow felt nothing. The pain, if it could pierce her, would be welcome. “It doesn’t matter.” Harrow said, her hand falling to her rapier idly. She pulled it away like a hand on flame as bare flesh kissed metal. “All in service to the Emperor.”

“I’m afraid she feels quite the same.” He gave her a last lingering smile and brushed a hair aside that had stuck into her paint. “Just remember: there is more than one sort of truth, and more than one sort of right.”Then he left her alone to puzzle over his words. 

Harrow looked down at the markings on the floor that denoted the limits of a cavalier ring. Willing herself forward, she placed her feet firmly within its bounds. She tried not to think of Canaan House and failed. Gideon behind the glass, back to her as she fought Naberius. She pushed the memories down.

When her Lyctor instructor crept into the room, Harrowhark thought she was staring down one of her own Ninth House. Ivory white covered her face from crown to nose. It was not the paint of a nun of the Locked Tomb, but a mask.

The woman was thin and bird-like, much like Harrow but taller, her skin a darker brown. Her short-cropped black hair fell straight and clean around the lip of her mask. She looked like a knife. She said nothing to Harrow as she removed her ivory face.

With her face bare, Harrow saw truth. Every part of this woman was dead in metaphor, every part projecting an air of hopelessness and regret. Every part of her but the liquid gold of her right eye (her left eye closed) and the impatient fingers of her right hand drumming against the hilt of her sword like she was counting. What she kept account of, Harrow didn’t know.

But she could guess.

The instructor fell into a fighting stance, her sword a one-handed, single-edged officer’s sword. She held it aloft in fencing form, which looked absurd.

“Baru the First.” Voice like dark water before a storm, still and forebodingly calm. It took Harrow several seconds to realize she was being challenged.

“But who will call?”

“The ghosts of our dead.”

Harrow fumbled with her rapier, desperately wishing she had the strength to wield Gideon’s long sword instead. She struggled into her stance, her footing off, then corrected. She was too weak for all of this. She raised her blade anyway.

“Harrowhark the First.”

It was the first time she had said her new name and it felt wrong. All of this was wrong. And then Baru the First shifted out of her fencing stance and raised her left hand to cover her left eye completely. She became another, her right arm, possessed, raised her sword wild and high and then came down on Harrow in a brutal overhead arc. Harrow deflected it badly, the edge of Baru’s blade glancing hard off her hand guard.

Why was she being tested by the blade? They had to know she would know nothing. They had to know she was nothing without Gideon.

She struck and Baru the First did not parry. Baru’s sword came neatly up to her shoulder and she spun three-quarters of the way around, missing Harrow’s blade entirely, forcing her to overextend through the lunge. With her back to Harrow, Baru thrust her pommel hard into Harrow’s ribs, all with her off-hand still over her left eye.

Harrow stifled the groan of pain and tried to pivot, but Baru the First was not following form. Harrow didn’t even know to what end the battle would come. Her death, if she was lucky—_ no _. Harrow had a debt she must still puppet herself at attempting to repay. 

“It is easy to forget,” Baru the First said as she faced Harrow now, her stance low, her sword still held lazily against her shoulder. “You think oh, I can never forget her, I shall hold her face in my mind, immortal like a death mask over a corpse.”

Unbidden, as if Baru had forced the memories to the forefront of Harrow’s mind: _Gideon’s body, impaled on the spikes, her stupid glasses falling to the ground._ _One runnel through her paint, tracking from her eye. One hand extended. Towards me._

Tears ran hot and silent down Harrow’s face. Baru lunged, her sword the point to an exclamation as it nearly ran Harrow through. It caught up in Harrow’s robes and Baru twisted and pulled back, Harrow stumbling towards her.

“You think you’ve lost everything, now that’s she’s dead. But no, no it’s only the first thing you lose.” Baru dropped her hand from her eye and held Harrow’s face in her left hand. Harrow tried to twist away but Baru forced her back. Harrow glared and then stared wide-eyed at Baru’s now open right eye: dark and bloodshot and wild.

“The curse of it is, I can’t forget the death. I can forget her face, her voice, even her lips on mine—“ Harrow’s heart flipped despite herself. “—But her death? Oh, I will remember that for eternity. And you know what else?” She paused, but the pressure on Harrow’s face was a vice. Baru was performing and Harrow was meant to listen. “I would do it again. And again. I would do it a thousand times. A Million. And I do.”

Baru threw Harrow back and opened her arms as if awaiting judgement. As if the practiced speech could come only to one end, the condemnation all Lyctors know well. 

Harrow wiped the tears from her face with a shaking hand. Fuck this. Fuck all of this, what does this have to do with saving the world? All she could do was deny Baru the reaction she wanted. _ What would Gideon say? _

“Wow. You’re like the intersection of Bastard and Bitch. You really got off on killing your cav, huh?” Her smile was tight and broken, but it was real. 

For the barest moment, Baru the First faltered. She became small and bitter and her guard opened. Harrow’s rapier whipped through the air. It was the mistake Baru planned on. 

Baru held up her left arm, bare flesh deflecting the blade as it sliced her open. Her flesh rose from the bone, skin and muscle deforming in too-quick bulbous growth that swallowed Harrow’s blade. The tumors crept up the length of the blade, over the guard and then it was on Harrow’s skin. She screamed as the growth buried into the flesh of her hand.

Automatic like breathing, Harrow raised her left hand and sunk the claws of Gideon’s gauntlet into the diseased flesh. The tumors wiggled as if in pain and then pulled up out of her hand, dissolving to nothing and releasing her sword back to her grip. Baru looked at her with affected shock, astounded beyond reason, ever the actress. Then she sheathed her sword and went down on one knee.

“I concede. Victory goes to the young Harrowhark the First.” Harrow saw the trap but not its shape. Baru stood and turned her back to Harrow, fumbling with the clasp of her mask as she set it back on her face. Harrow didn’t strike, didn’t move at all, wary and ready for the other foot to fall. When Baru turned back, she seemed almost calm. Apologetic. Unknown to Harrow, the cancer grew.

“You want to know how she died?” Baru said with the pressure of a storm’s eye.

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me anyway.” 

Baru conceded the point with a nod and gestured for Harrow to follow. Where, Harrow only dreaded. It turned out to be possibly the only place worse than the training room. An accountant’s office.

The office felt like one of the static rooms of Canaan House, a dated wooden paneled study, frozen in time with macabre knickknacks tucked into shelves between real paper books. A taxidermy cormorant was pinned half against the wall, half perched on a piece of driftwood. It’s wings were spread gloriously, needle thin pins affixing the feathers to the wall, it’s chest cavity peeled open to reveal cracked ribs and folded lungs. A small void held a gold coin where the heart should have been. 

Less melodramatic, though somehow more grotesque, on the opposite wall hung a large anatomical diagram of a disfigured whale, most of it gnarled with scars of age with a large, horrific tumor on its back, a too-large human skull lodged in its tail. 

Baru walked behind her long wood desk, poured a glass of whiskey and draped her legs over the side of a high backed armchair as if desecrating a throne. She sipped the whiskey as if savoring the burn. She did not pour a glass for Harrow. Harrow was still staring at the diagram of the whale, trying to make quick sense of the necromantic theorems scrawled in the margins near the tumor when Baru asked: “What was her name?”

Harrow’s golden eyes snapped back to the older Lyctor and steeled herself against the pain the name would cause; she would not show it to Baru. “Gideon.”

Baru tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. “An interesting name, indeed.”

“And yours?”

“Tain Hu.” She spoke as blandly as if she were commenting on the weather.

“How did she die?” Harrow had had enough of this Baru. Let her get her song and dance over with quickly so she could go back to her room and grieve in peace.

Baru’s expression shifted again, something crept across her face like a monstrous shadow, a skittering of emotion that sunk its claws into the curve of her smile and corner of her right eye, tilting both down against her will. 

“How did she die?” Baru repeated, as if only she had the right to say it. “Gloriously. Rebelliously. Perfectly.”

“You killed—”

“No. The _ sword _ kills.”

“Fuck you.”

Baru looked at Harrow as if she was considering it, then continued to recite from _ Manumission _: “But the arm moves the sword. Is the arm to blame for the murder?”

“Yes. It was _your_ fucking arm. You killed her.” Harrow’s rage was spilling over; her chest was palpitating. What the fuck was God thinking, making this woman a Saint?

“No. The mind moves the arm. Is the mind to blame?”

“You’re just saying shit now.”

“No. The mind has sworn an oath to duty, and that duty moves the mind.”

“So you can logic away anything, any death?”

Baru looked more deeply into Harrow’s golden eyes and there it was again, that flash of humanity behind the monster.

“Have you already forgotten your oath, little Hawk? One flesh, one end. You are no more responsible for her death than she is for your birth.” Baru paused, savoring the unplanned pain that symmetrical lie caused Harrow. She made a mental note. “The cavalier is the sword, the necromancer the mind. Together, you are the servant of the Emperor, and thus: you are blameless.”

Harrow felt the prick of tears again. “_ Fuck _ the oath!” She could not think of it, could not think of the pool and of Gideon’s body pressed to hers. She could not think of the smile, of the jokes, of the warmth of her hand that meant Gideon was alive. She killed Gideon and there was nothing Baru the First could say to absolve her. Harrow clutched her chest and felt a strange pressure that was not emotion. She coughed, absurdly thinking of Cytherea. Baru’s black eye shined with interest.

“Do you feel it grow? This is just the beginning. Her death bought you entrance to immortality, but you have yet to walk the path.”

Harrow coughed more vigorously, blood splattering her hand as she covered it. She looked up to Baru, accusing.

“Yes, my necromancy is that of unfettered life. Life I stole, of course.”

“At least you’re consistent.”

“This is your test from me, your first instructor. Do what took me a lifetime in a week: Find a way to control the Cancrioth that tears you from the inside. Master your own biology, and your body shall become a more deadly weapon than the sword. Learn this art, and if you live, I shall teach you new horrors. If you die, I shall add your life to my ledger.”

Harrow looked to her chest and then to Baru. Her serene calm was the mask, the sickening truth on display at all times. Harrow spat blood into Baru’s black eye. Baru smiled thin and wide.

“You didn’t deserve her,” Harrow said hard and quiet as gravestone.

The blood dripped down Baru’s face and she inclined her head as if she agreed. That almost stopped Harrow, almost gave in to that lingering doubt that Baru might not be a monster, but then her rage overtook her and she didn’t know if she was talking to Baru or to herself.

“She died a stupid, _ worthless _ death. She died for a bitch who didn’t deserve her. Your cavalier was a fucking idi—”

Baru’s hand was on her throat, the gasp Harrow would have made dying in her throat before it could be born. Baru held up her left hand, her fingers covered in Harrow’s spit-slick blood as she covered her left eye. Her golden eye looked into Harrow’s like a mirror, and Tain Hu said:

“I killed her, yes. 

I watched from the stone as she broke to pieces. I died, choking on salt water, because I refused to bleed out her secrets before our enemies.

I died in the salt to take her silent sin to the grave.

I died for Baru Fisher

and her death is on my hands.”

Harrow choked on Baru’s grip and the cancer in her chest. She gasped and she fought against Baru’s insanity and then her hands were moving on their own, swift and clean as they unsheathed her sword and lifted it to Baru’s golden eye like a threat. Baru flinched and withdrew, and Gideon’s strength thrust the blade through Baru’s heart. 

Baru laughed a bubbled bloody laugh. Harrow fell backwards on her ass and scrambled backwards on hands and feet, coughing as she crossed the threshold out of the office. She looked back and saw Baru pulling the blade from her chest with a smile. As Harrow scrambled to stand, Baru threw the blade at her feet. 

“One week, Hawk.” Baru reminded, then rounded her desk towards Harrow. Harrow snatched up her blade and held it at the ready thinking Baru was coming for her still, but Baru only reached for the door and slammed it in Harrow’s face.

Harrow slumped in relief, and then had another fit of coughing that caused her to spit up more blood. She closed her eyes and searched for the growth within her, pinching off new growth where she could. She wrapped the tumors in her own energy, slowing but not stopping them. She didn’t know how.

“Well, she’s fucking insane,” she said to herself as she sheathed her sword and put her hands on her knees.

In the darkness behind her, a voice drawled, “That’s not insanity.” 

Harrow spun and the blur of Baru’s gold eye must have seared into her vision. She saw the gold eye over and over in the shadows, nine eyes moving in the dark. One for each house. She closed her eyes and shook her head, and then before her stood a short, practical woman in gold and black uniform and fingerless black gloves. “Come on then, little hawk, let’s get you cleaned up.” She put a comforting hand on Harrow’s shoulder, her mouth quirked in a smile that made Harrow deeply uneasy. “Then we’ll teach you to burn.”

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 2: "The More Eyes, The Better"


End file.
